Tanya Asim Cooper

Tanya Asim Cooper is Assistant Professor of Clinical Legal Instruction and Director of the Domestic Violence Law Clinic at the University of Alabama School of Law. Besides teaching the Domestic Violence Law Clinic, Professor Cooper serves as acting chair of the Domestic Violence Task Force of Tuscaloosa County, which coordinates the efforts of local domestic violence agencies, shelters, courts and law enforcement to provide holistic services to clients and the community. Tanya Asim Cooper appeared on WVUA TV about domestic violence and the Domestic Violence Law Clinic, which can be viewed hereand here.

Before joining the law school faculty, she worked as a Clinical Instructor in the HIV/AIDS Legal Clinic at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL). While there, she taught and supervised student attorneys in a wide variety of family law cases before the D.C. Court of Appeals, D.C. Superior Court and in D.C. administrative fair hearings. Together with her law students and colleagues, Professor Cooper helped reunify families, including In re Ang.P., slip op. (D.C. July 25, 2013); In re A.O.T., 10 A.3d 160 (D.C. 2010); In re N.R., 41 A.3d 1219 (D.C. 2012); and In re D.W. 137 Daily Wash. L. Rptr. 1513 (D.C. Sup. Ct. 2009). She and her students also participated in systemic reform and community organizing to improve parents’ experiences in D.C.’s child welfare system.

Prior to teaching, Professor Cooper was a staff attorney at DC’s Children’s Law Center for five years. During that time, she represented indigent children in abuse and neglect, adoption, guardianship, and custody cases; parents in special education, custody, housing and public benefits cases; child witnesses in civil and criminal child abuse cases; and she advocated for neglected children in juvenile delinquency and special education matters.

Professor Cooper holds a B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Boston University; a J.D., cum laude, from American University Washington College of Law (WCL); and an LL.M. in clinical legal education, systems change and social justice from UDC-DCSL. She is also a certified child welfare law specialist. In law school, she was a member the Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law and was awarded the Dean’s citation for the highest grade earned in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic and Law and Visual Arts.

Tanya Asim Cooper is a member of the Alabama State Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, and the State Bar of California. She is married to Stephen Alexander Cooper, a death penalty trial and appellate attorney with the Federal Defenders of the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama.

The University of Alabama School of Law | Box 870382 | 101 Paul W. Bryant Drive, East | Tuscaloosa, AL 35487